


day in and day out (been looking for you)

by happycakeycake



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Groundhog Day AU, Halloween, Happy Ending, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Time Loop, elements of suspense/mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2018-12-30 09:16:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12105516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happycakeycake/pseuds/happycakeycake
Summary: The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and Jooheon wakes to October 31st. Again, and again, and again.He doesn’t even like Halloween.





	day in and day out (been looking for you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songcry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/songcry/gifts).



> So...this is finally done, dear lord. Thank god i made the deadline haha i was really pushing it. Thank you songcry for such an interesting prompt, it was really quite the challenge, but I hope it somehow fulfilled at least some aspect you wanted out of it??? Anyways looking forward to doing this again next year with less procrastination hopefully - A BIG BIG THANK YOU to the admins for giving me an extension of a few hours on this fic, you guys are the best, i cannot thank y’all enough.  
> Also, a big apology for my hiatus, I swear I haven’t given up on updating my other works - life just really came around too quickly you know? Hopefully, by december I’ll be ready with a chaptered update!!  
> A big shoutout to taelights for bearing through all my whining about this fic to the finished product now! Also a very late happy birthday to manuela who really made october a better month with her presence - happy birthday girl!!!!!  
> Anyway for anyone reading, I hope you enjoy!

It’s October 31st.

Jooheon takes one look at the blaring alert on his phone and rolls right back to sleep. He sniffs, nose twitching as the dust settles into a fine sheen over his blankets and resolves to bury away a few more hours into the allergy-inducing crevices of his generations-old goose-down comforter.

In all honesty, he’s _never_ liked Halloween - in fact, he feels strongly enough about the matter that he could rightfully say that he hates the damned holiday with a burning passion.

Which makes it all very difficult, seeing as his loving dongsaeng absolutely _adores_ it to a completely opposite degree. Proof: last year, Changkyun spent at least a minimum of fifty hours constructing a bubblegum machine costume from scratch with saran wrap, balloons, and an inscrutable amount of cardboard boxes, all hacked, slashed, painted, and warped into various contortions until the so-called masterpiece was completed to every incomprehensible standard of Changkyun’s unofficial rulebook of costume regulations.

Watching the younger boy waddle down the street in all his round, hand-crafted glory had been a once in a lifetime experience, and definitely not because of the anxious moms leading away their five-year-olds with an iron grip and a wary stare. Of course, Jooheon had followed in a simple black hoodie and jeans, cat ears perched atop his head and black whiskers slashed across his cheeks, courtesy of Minhyuk.

He scoffs a dry laugh into the fuzz of his blankets, blinking awake as he remembers the makeshift bubblegum machine popping with a snap of cardboard and a disappointed cry from its maker, followed by the steady plop of balloon after balloon spilling across the windy street. Jooheon runs through the rest of the night in his head, vaguely recalling Kihyun’s raised iPad and crinkled smile as he had recorded Changkyun stumbling home with the torn remnants of three months of painstaking work dangling off of his skinny waist and Jooheon’s ratty old hoodie wound around his bare chest.

Jooheon lets his eyes slip shut again, lids flickering against the warm morning light as he pulls the edge of his blanket up to the tip of his nose. Last Halloween plays through his drowsy mind in a short, clicking sequence, each scene fluctuating with blurred dots like the scenes in old black and white films, except Changkyun’s cheeky grin is lit in full, joyous color, the apples of his cheeks round with amber street light and gleaming white from the natural glare of the full moon. Jooheon can’t stop his own dry lips from stretching into a smile of fond nostalgia, amusement pulling him out of the fog of sleep because, man, that was _quite_ the night.

It makes him wonder though, curiosity with a backwash of overwhelming dread, how will this year’s Halloween go? The tight breathlessness of anxiety returns, balling up in the center of his chest, and he shoves his face under the stuffy heat of his comforter again, clenching his eyes shut in hard, shaky denial.

If only he could stay in bed and just avoid ever going out tonight - even better if he could just skip the day entirely. As it is, he can only moan begrudgingly into worn cotton when his phone sounds, vibrating face-down from its slanted position atop his faded tiger-print pillow. Jooheon reaches for it with stiff fingers, not even bothering with hesitation because he’s already one-hundred and ten percent sure of the only person it could be that’s texting him so early on such a "special" day.

No doubt about it, there’s Changkyun’s rectangular contact card flashing across his phone screen, black squiggles of tiny text waiting under the affectionate nickname for Jooheon’s immediate reply. He sighs, more than half-awake now as a deep ache begins settling into his heavy body, and swipes a thumb over the shining alert bubble, opening up the message with a willful _click_.

It takes a moment or two for his eyes to focus on the minuscule words: a combined effort from symptoms of mild astigmatism caused by long hazy hours in front of an unmoving, white screen, glaring directly into his only source of harsh light for the night, and also the sharp planes of the cold October sunshine currently lodging themselves into his squinted field of vision. He wriggles back under the covers, phone cradled in hand as he resolves to order a pair of glasses after this dreaded day has passed.

Under the cavernous darkness of his hand-me-down blankets, Changkyun’s text reflects into his retinas with clear definition, blaring out at him with what Jooheon carefully counts to be thirteen exclamation points. The words float small and stark in their bright green message bubble, and Jooheon’s worn eyes immediately widen as they scan over each scarce letter, pupils flickering back and forth as they jump over the text, reading and re-reading it in a fugue attempt to comprehend their meaning.

 

 _loving dongsaeng_ _♥_ : costumes are here meet me by the post office!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

The problem is: what costumes exactly? Jooheon groans, deep from the dredges of exasperation in his creaking bones, digging his head into creased pillows to the point of near suffocation as he tries to recall any instance of voluntarily planning out a matching costume set with Changkyun in the numerous days leading up to this year’s Halloween.

He rolls onto his back, blankets tangling between his legs and looks up towards the ceiling, its dim darkness reflecting the exact contents of his brain right now: absolutely nothing. 

His phone buzzes needily, loudly, calling his distracted attention back to the literal issue at hand. This time there’s only one exclamation point but a much more urgent message behind the hastily sent words.

 

 _loving dongsaeng_ _♥_ : i know ur still in bed giving you ten minutes to meet me here!

 

Attached is a selca of Changkyun glaring at an upward angle into the camera lens, hair ruffled and curled in wayward strands from what Jooheon assumes to be a recent shower, and round hipster frames on their way to slipping down the pointy ridge of his sloped nose. Despite all his attempts to sound threatening, the loose collar of his holiday appropriate black and white sweater hangs just slightly too wide around the curve of his neck, and the flared rays of sunlight only soften the slim edge of his glare into a mere squint.

There’s a hint of sleepless nights swatched in bruised bags under his sullen stare, and all Jooheon wants to do is kick the younger boy back into bed - preferably for the entire day.

Unfortunately, he somehow still hasn’t figured out the whole read receipts system in all the numerous years since he first bought his phone, so he rolls himself out of bed with a sense of dragging exhaustion and begins dressing jerkily in the autumn weather, the pale strip of skin between the knitted collar of Changkyun’s “spooky” sweater and the long line of his jaw remaining stuck under Jooheon’s sleep-swollen lids throughout the entire clumsy process.

As he heads to the door, he catches a blurred glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror and promptly grimaces, pausing and spinning on the spot to head back into the messy den of his room. There’s a random snapback hooked onto the nonexistent edge of a ratty old beanbag chair from his middle school days, and Jooheon jams it over his head without a second thought, disregarding any fried hairs that could be sticking out at the most awkward angles.

His fading dye job has been valiantly doing its best to fight against the enemy that is his dark roots to no avail, and today, Jooheon is in no mood to deal with the mess that is his hair - or really, he corrects himself, scanning over his wrinkled sweatpants and mismatched cookie and doughnut socks, the general mess that his very existence embodies at this very moment. Well, it’s only for today at least, because he swears there have been people that have told him he’s a steady ten on their scale in a completely sober state of mind.

(There was the instance of Changkyun crooning ‘ _beauutifuuul’_ up in his vague direction, head lolling like an erratic bowling ball against Jooheon’s sore shoulder, looking like a cross-eyed goldfish as he had attempted to focus his swimming gaze on the older boy’s bemused expression. Of course, he had then promptly hunched over and thrown up on the campus lawn, and Jooheon had then rushed over, drunken compliment already forgotten as he had watched with a sense of fascinated horror when a jet stream of yellow vomit fountained out in a magnificent trajectory from Changkyun’s flared nostrils.)

Now that he thinks about it, Jooheon wonders if the younger boy may have actually been trying to make eye-contact with the moon that was oh-so-conveniently blocked out by his own big head. He scoffs lightly, shaking said head fondly as he remembers late night text rambles about black holes, vacuum decay, and random space gibberish so complex that his foggy four a.m. mind could only reply with ‘ _cool_ ’ before rapidly dropping back down onto the pillow, dead asleep again.

Changkyun’s a nerd, he thinks, laughing to himself as he shoves an old high school track hoodie over his head - _but a cute one though_ , his sleep-deprived brain supplies, and Jooheon immediately flips the hood over his head, pulling the strings tight in a rapid knee-jerk reaction.

Of course, it has to be today, for Jooheon to be awake before twelve, for Changkyun to be sending him selcas that force his heart to beat with irreverent palpitations - it’s all so unfair. The shot of the younger’s exposed, gently sloping collarbones flashes through his mind’s eye again, and Jooheon catches himself at the door, grabbing a spare jacket before he finally heads out to face his fate for the day.

 

-

 

“Two minutes, hyung - you’re late,” Changkyun mumbles the second Jooheon steps a foot even remotely near the tiny walls of the cozy post office on the corner of the street.

“And I’m awake two hours too early,” the older boy replies in a heartbeat, throwing the jacket over Changkyun without a moment’s notice, bemusedly watching as the sleeves settle with an audible flap atop the younger’s unassuming head.

Jooheon watches in cheerful silence, the corner of his eyes creasing upwards like that of a laughing fox, and Changkyun glares at him from under the tangled bird’s nest of clothing and hastily dried hair, lenses tilted crookedly across his face. He reaches over his head to haul the errant jacket down to where it should be, ducking forward as droopy, bat-winged sleeves completely block out his slipping vision. It’s a valiant struggle, much more than the instigator had originally meant for it to be, but Changkyun finally achieves success with a rough shake of his head, clawing at the stubborn fabric with thin wrists that stick out so clearly from under the oversized sleeves of his sweater, like two blocks of hastily carved marble. He shoves his arms into the loose jacket, glowering sulkily even as he immediately tucks his chin into the sloping cut of the collar, sighing soundlessly as an extra layer of warmth settles over his chilled skin.

The crisp morning wind blows, early and bright, bringing with it shades of gold and yellow that color Changkyun’s twisted locks into a light, melted chocolate. He sneezes, a loud exclamation that interrupts the sing-song of chirping birds and rustling leaves, and Jooheon is vaguely reminded of the stocky puppy that had rolled around with its belly bared before the open porch window of his aunt’s cozy, tea-scented house. (That puppy may or may not have been the one true love of his ten-year-old life.)

Now, he looks over at Changkyun, who’s raking blunt fingers through unstyled curls, pushing up the ridge of his wire-frame glasses in that same infuriating way he does in class when he knows he’s answered something correctly and decides that as a twenty-four-year-old, he’s definitely moved on to better things.

“I take it that this is your apology for being late,” Changkyun grumbles, picking aimlessly at one particularly adamant strand of hair as a last ditch effort of playing at feigned anger.

“Sure,” Jooheon hums, raising a slight brow as he watches the younger boy go cross-eyed trying to neaten out the piece of hair stuck to the center of his forehead. “For my grievous error of only two minutes, I suppose.”

“Of course,” Changkyun states self-righteously, turning a blind eye to Jooheon’s very apparent sarcasm. He blows crossly at the messy strand and promptly gives up when it flops back down and continues to stick to his bare forehead like a limp noodle. “You’re forgiven, oh treacherous one,” he announces, tucking his hands into worn pockets as he finally focuses on Jooheon with a slow grin, complete with a soft hint of tiny dimples.

“I’m honored, Lord Im,” Jooheon crows, flashing back his own crater-deep set as he ambles over to Changkyun’s side.

“You’re about to be so much more honored Lee,” the younger boy declares, nodding pretentiously, dark pupils glimmering with amused anticipation.

Jooheon rolls his eyes in loud, exaggerated circles, but he keeps his mouth shut, opting to push open the door instead with a cheerful jingling entrance and herding Changkyun in with a light, forward shove of his chest against the edge of the younger’s shoulder.

Changkyun stumbles, throwing a heated look over his shoulder before striding up the counter, retrieving what Jooheon assumes to be a packet of matching costumes that, again, he still has no recollection of ever agreeing to. As the other boy murmurs in low, indistinguishable tones with the sleepy clerk, Jooheon busies himself with a lenient examination of the post office’s collection of stamps, flipping through garishly pink wedding spreads to stock photo perfect prints of stiffly posed cats and dogs.

He stops his cursive scanning when he happens upon a 560 won “total eclipse of the sun” stamp with a 1314 won “global moon” stamp reposed right next to it. The moon looks close enough to resembling the actual mass of rock floating outside the earth's atmosphere, and he vaguely assumes a “total eclipse of the sun” is meant to be a plain black circle with cartoonishly scrawled rays of light pouring out in plain white strips from behind it. Either way, he decides Changkyun would be the one to know, so he picks up a set of each and heads to the counter to stand beside the other boy.

Changkyun doesn’t look up, doesn’t even move, too preoccupied with scratching out his scrawling signature over a faded receipt as the clerk bumbles around back with uneven thumps of tilted boxes, presumably searching for Changkyun’s mysterious Halloween package. Jooheon slides his flimsy pieces of purchase onto the counter and leans down against it, sprawling his upper body over the smooth granite as he cradles his head against his palm, sleepily admiring the concentrated point of the younger’s sharp stare with a dazed tilt and half-lidded stare.

Changkyun jumps just slightly, pen slipping loose at the end of his looped signature when something soft brushes gentle and airy over his forehead, flicking the adamant strand of hair stuck between his eyes back against his scalp. He glances over, pupils flickering with a wordless question, only to see Jooheon’s round, tofu-soft cheek squished over a lazily leaned palm, eyes creasing into shaded crescent moons as he motions with a round finger to an invisible curl around the general vicinity of his own smooth forehead. “You had a little something here,” he affirms, sunlight dipping into the doughy creases in his cheeks.

“I was aware,” Changkyun mutters, heart jittering as morning rays shining through plain windows light up the tufts of Jooheon’s fading white hair in a blinding solar flash. He automatically runs a nervous palm past his own hair, pressing the previously errant lock that much tighter against his head.

Jooheon’s fond, drowsy grin only fades off of the round moons of his cheeks when the clerk comes bumbling back, a taped bundle clutched in hand, and both boys hurriedly turn away from each for some anxious, unspoken reason. Changkyun fumbles to push his signed slip over the counter, attempting to reach for his package at the same time with tight, clenched fingers. Jooheon gathers the space-themed stamps in hand, ready to catch the clerk’s wandering attention the moment he can manage it.

His opportunity comes when the package finally rolls with a rough tumble into Changkyun’s awaiting palms, the younger boy turning on the spot as he expects to leave immediately with his friend in tow. However, there’s a missing set of padding footsteps behind his own, and he pauses, package grasped firmly in hand with curiosity simmering low in his stomach as he watches Jooheon shuffle over with an envelope tucked haphazardly inside his hoodie pocket.

He resumes walking once the older boy is close enough, the both of them automatically falling into step with one another. This time Changkyun pushes the door open first, propping it open with the heel of his scuffed vans as he grudgingly waits for Jooheon to walk out after him. The older boy strides past, unhurried, flashing him a sweet grin on his way out, and Changkyun forces himself to keep his stare bland and unimpressed even as his throat catches at the twin set of craters dipping into Jooheon’s cheeks.

Unconsciously, they fall into the same rhythm again, weathered nikes and worn vans leading the two back down a quaint, quiet October morning path. “So,” Changkyun speaks up as he spots the flat street sign that leads to Jooheon’s apartment approaching at a steady speed, “are you trying to re-apply to college now?” He motions with a cursory flicker of his eyes to the stark white envelope sticking out of the other boy’s front pocket.

“As if,” Jooheon snorts, not a care in the world for appearances as he pulls his cap off, scuffling a hand through his flattened hair until it poofs out like a white dandelion puff ready to take off after late April showers, before jamming the baseball cap over his raging mane and caging it down again.

“Since you can’t stand to wait,” he sighs, drawn out and exasperated with an obvious play at exaggeration, “I”ll just give it to you now.” He shoves his hand into his front pocket and extracts the crisp envelope with much wrangling and wrinkling within the shapeless folds of his hoodie, finally handing it over to Changkyun with a creased smile on his face and a slight crumpling at the corners of the impromptu gift.

“Happy favorite holiday,” he announces cheerily, tucking his hands into the freed up space of his hoodie pocket, watching under hooded lashes as Changkyun fiddles with the sticky envelope flap as he attempts to open his second package of the day, clutching the first one tightly in the crook of his bent arm.

When he finally manages to pull out the contents of the now slightly ripped envelope, his slim eyes widen visibly at the collection of cartoonishly depicted solar eclipses and hastily printed yellow moons, gaze shifting erratically between Jooheon’s perpetually curled grin and the stamps clutched in his loose grip as he realizes - it was a gift for him the entire time.

“I don’t know if you actually need to send letters, or if you even remember how to send one,” the other boy teases, pausing to stifle a breathy laugh at the instant look of absolute annoyance on the younger’s face, “but hey, it’ll be a good addition to your nerd collection either way, right?”

“I can’t believe you hyung,” Changkyun sighs, more to the whispers of the wind than anything else at the moment, with a flat pout and his signature glower. Still, he takes care to slowly slip the cheesy stamps back into the open, jagged edge of the ripped envelope before cradling the package in the well-worn warmth of his borrowed jacket. The older boy’s casual teasing is still bouncing around with loud echoes inside his mind and combined with the sudden present pulsing against his flushed palm, it’s all doing something confusing with his already mixed emotions.

“Don’t deny it,” Jooheon states, slinging an arm in a loose hold over Changkyun’s hunched shoulders. “I know in the back of your closet you totally have a stash of moldy-ass books and posters over wormholes and space shit instead of a porn collection like normal teenagers.” He imagines the scenario behind his own words for a moment, Changkyun slouched over, small and secretive in the back of his dusty room and rapidly wipes the image away when something strange tickles along the inside of his stomach.

“What, like the collection of Agust D’s mixtapes on actual cassette copies makes _you_ any better?” Changkyun retorts without any real heat, ducking out from under Jooheon’s stunned grip as the other’s creaking, rusting apartment complex looms into view just a few steps away. He shakes his head lightly, trying to dispel the fog that had been clouding through his brain under the heavy weight of Jooheon’s casual touch.

“Hey,” the other boy climbs atop the first step, turning back with a sage pout plastered across his face, “don’t judge okay? Also, he goes by Suga now, so please respect the name change.”

Changkyun considers, for just one moment, imitating the elder’s pitched, slightly nasally whine, but he files the idea away in favor of frantically setting his fingers upon the package tucked and almost forgotten against his side. Jooheon has already resumed his languid ascent up the stairs, so he hastily proceeds to tear at the slippery duct tape, scrabbling at its stubborn edges with the sharp tips of his nails until the package rips open in a bright streak of brown and yellow, spilling out from the cardboard box in string of soft, very colorful intestines.

“Hyung-” he calls urgently, perhaps a little too urgently as Jooheon’s foot narrowly misses the next step, and he wobbles dangerously in place before swiveling back with a squinted frown. The piercing rays of the sun are still too bright for an autumn morning, even with the beginning of the day fast approaching, and it makes looking over at Changkyun’s waiting figure hurt far more than it usually should.

“Here,” the younger boy yells again, albeit within a much more acceptable noise range, and he chucks a bunched up pile of yellow towards Jooheon’s outstretched, unsteady palms with a loose underhand toss.

“Wh-what is this?” The older boy questions, quickly beginning the arduous process of untangling the ball of cloth with a careful sense of trepidation. However, Changkyun is already picking up a steady pace and retracing his steps back down the street, practically speed walking without even a slight acknowledgment of Jooheon's confusion. 

“What am I even supposed to do with this?” Jooheon shouts after Changkyun’s retreating back at a noise level that is completely inappropriate for a residential neighborhood at eight in the morning.

“Put it on and I'll meet you at your door when it’s nighttime!” The younger boy yells back, just as, if not, louder, and Jooheon can already hear the phantom exclamation of doors slamming closed with a jarring _thump_ of wood on wood throughout the wide, rickety halls of his apartment complex.

Without a second of consideration nor thought, he blurts out, “How am I supposed to know when that is?” as a last-ditch effort to root Changkyun’s rapidly receding figure in place. The younger boy does indeed stop, one leg bent and frozen in an assumed motion in front of the other, mind racing as he attempts to comprehend the apparent complex nuances of Jooheon’s question. The guilty party winces under the shadowed lip of the building, regretting every passing moment from the second those desperate, meaningless words dropped from his flapping lips.

Changkyun seems to make that realization himself, resuming his brisk pace with a tight sigh pushing tightly his chest. “I know your eyes are small, but maybe use them some time and actually look out the window, dumbass!” He muffles out a gritted shout, words thrown directly over his shoulder as if to hit Jooheon squarely on his dropped jaw.

 _Ouch_ , the older boy has to hold his breath for a second or two as he watches the red jacket draped around Changkyun’s bent back flap down the road in three jerky strides and then completely out of view.

Oh wait, that was _his_ jacket wasn’t it.

The October wind answers with a chilly draft, slipping its slim fingers straight through his every layer of clothing and stroking harsh pads across his prickling flesh. Jooheon shivers to the very edge of every hair on his head and promptly turns to drag his clenched body back inside, Changkyun’s hurried words lodged deep in the soft recesses of his mind. His first task upon returning home will be to pull open all his curtains so he can as stated, “look out the window, dumbass!” when the time comes. He massages the ridge of his stuffy nose with a slow, aching press of his fingers, frustratedly wishing he could somehow start the day over again from the stuffy comfort of his bed.

Too bad those parallel universe and wormhole theories in Changkyun’s books aren’t real, he considers with quick dismissive curiosity as he lets himself back into his apartment with an easy click of key through the lock.

 

-

 

The windows are indeed open now, and Jooheon is using his fully functioning pair of eyes to peer out through them, the baggy folds of his costume pooling into thin yellow waterfalls over the couch’s moth-eaten cushions.

Speaking of, his costume, which is an absolutely garish feat of all the magnificent calculations involved in the craft of sewing and the grossly understated complexities of a bee’s anatomy, are all meshed into the loose onesie he’s currently wrangled his body into.

The stuffed antennas bob aimlessly from the top his head, pulling on the thin fabric of the hood as he glances up inquisitively at the purpling sky. The clouds are sweeping out past the blood-red edge of the sun like hungry, nebulous sharks, the edges of their bodies fading into orange wisps with every sweep of the wind’s careless fingers sifting their way through the sky. It’s definitely the last vestiges of daylight, the stained brightness of the sky dripping into the dark spread of the night with the impression of melting candle wax as the moon boldly reforms in the sun’s place, turning its pale cold cheek upon the world again.

A hasty buzz erupts from the drooping pocket of his onesie, and Jooheon tears his gaze away from the hellish sunset, focusing instead on a lone, hooded figure standing expectantly beneath his window. He tugs on his own hood, waiting for the familiar weight of the stuffed antennas to droop over his head, ducking down until the flimsy edge of yellow fabric hints at the corner of his eye.

Satisfied, he slips his keys into his pocket, the onesie quickly sagging to accommodate the hefty addition, and he heads out the door, a strange sense of nervous anticipation heightening with every step of his scuffed nikes through the air, down each hazy stair, and towards Changkyun’s shadowy figure.

“So,” he starts, coming around to the younger’s left side, “why the onesies?”

Changkyun immediately begins walking, pulling slightly ahead as he leads the way through the suffocating silence of the night towards some unknown destination - well, unknown to Jooheon at least. “Well,” he turns minutely as he walks, eyes glimmering in the dim streetlight, teeth flashing in an open grin, “It’s Halloween isn’t it?” It’s too dark to see, but there’s something strange, hidden, and indefinite within his hooded gaze, and Jooheon’s insides contract as the wind blows a cold whisper through his thinly clad body at the same time.

“But, I mean, don’t you usually make your own costumes? Also, why bother ordering one for me?” he asks, walking briskly until they’re shoulder to shoulder, falling into the same loping cadence like they’ve done so many times in the past. Jooheon tries to smile, injecting the usual playfulness into his step, hoping to push past the unsteady tenseness in the moth-ridden air.

“Because, this year,” Changkyun stresses, _insists_ , looking up at the older boy with that strange glimmer in his eyes again. “This year is _special_ , I want to make it special- for you.” He bites down on his bottom lip, gazing at some distant point in the blank cement as a trail of words rush from his mouth, so soft Jooheon almost assumes they’re being directed at someone else entirely.

“-for us,” Changkyun whispers, voice dry, something frantic and desperate choking him from the inside.

Jooheon shuffles along in silence, unconsciously lagging slightly behind the other’s bowed figure. There’s multiple instances on their vague journey where he wants to open his mouth, shaky emotions caught at the tip of his tongue, but then his brain will slip into an echoing relapse of Changkyun’s enigmatic words, and his thoughts will promptly melt into the whistling cavern of the night again.

As the whirling gears in his brain turn, clicking, creaking, and groaning in rusty motions past one another, he manages to drag a weak tease out from his swollen tongue. He pastes on a light-hearted grin as some semblance of speech finally leaves successfully from his mouth. “I mean, isn’t it more special if you made them yourself - like you do practically every year?” He tacks on a laugh, high and jittery at the rim of his throat, stomach tightening in an emotion that is definitively anything but amusement.

Changkyun tilts his head back, neck craning at what must be the most uncomfortable angle, and he smiles, the flickering street light glimmering like round little moons in the creased slits of his eyes. “Good one hyung,” he hums, mirroring Jooheon’s laugh, neck still bent upward in all its unnaturalness, tilting back even further as an expression of impassioned glee overtakes his tight grin.

It must be some trick of light - after all it’s practically pitch-black at this point, and it’s been established how badly he needs glasses - so Jooheon tells himself, and yet something inherently grips him in place as he watches Changkyun prance down the street, stumbling as if he were drunk on pure adrenaline. He resembles a doll being jilted around on broken strings, its body being snapped around with the awkwardness of something completely inhuman.

Jooheon shivers and wills his feet to follow the stumbling boy into the maw of the night. He exhales frozen fear in a visible puff of condensation and tells himself that it must just be the weather tonight. He traces after Changkyun’s loping steps as fast as he can muster his stiff body to do so, passing street after nameless street, until Jooheon rolls to a stop and realizes - he has absolutely no idea where they are.

He could swear he only remembers going straight for the past thirty minutes, but the hard grit of the cement has seemingly given way to the marshy spring of wild grass and suddenly, there’s the inquisitive rustling of yellow-eyed raccoons and a noisy background of chirping crickets. The moon turns her face fully down upon them, drawing back silky curtains to part the way through a clearing shaped by twisting oaks and wavering roads, all pointing towards a desolate house that presents itself in dark silence at the center of this other world at the apparent end of his neighborhood.

Jooheon pauses, the soles of his sneakers sinking into the wet mud with every gasping shift of whispering weeds clutching at his legs. He swallows with an audible catch in his throat, staring directly at the empty windows of the decaying mansion. The house stares straight back, the open hole where its door should be, gaping back in an open grimace with a breathy moan everytime the wind brushes through the field. Again, Jooheon blinks and wonders how soon he should get his eyes checked.

“Come on,” Changkyun murmurs, calm as he makes his way through the sudden outcropping of cat whiskered reeds. Despite his steady facade, there’s a jumping tick in the pale edge of his jaw and a frantic panic in the shadow under his eyes.

Jooheon glances downward, at the horrid yellow folds of his costume sagging over the rigid edge of his sneakers, dragging like an accidental splash of paint into the tinted grey and brown background of the damp marsh, and he looks back up, breath catching at the steady plain of Changkyun’s receding back. He picks up a soaked foot with a sucking _squish_  and hurries to follow, not waiting to see if the dark mouth of the earth will swallow him whole, step by step. There’s a burning itch tingling across the back of his eyelids and a sinking stone in his gut, but the full moon watches on with her one pale eye, the forest sings its song of indecipherable rustling, and Changkyun parts his way through all of that with his soft, sure steps - so what other option does Jooheon have but to follow?

The forest swallows up every last trace of color on his yellow onesie with a slow crinkle of leaves, but he only reaches forward, blinded by the white light of the moon, searching for a trace of a bobbing wolf-head in the flittering motions of dappled shadows. Scrappy arms wind across his path as Jooheon bumbles past sharp branches that whip with a searing sting into his palms, over his cheeks, and cling onto his lashes in fine bits of falling dust - until something catches with a bruising slam around the top of his foot.

He chokes on a dry cry of pain and quickly stumbles over the crooked root, toes aching in protest as he presses them into the hard plastic curve of his sneakers. Jooheon leans over, the same bruise blooming through the tight cavern of his chest, gripping him with a clenching sense of breathlessness as he waits for the pain to recede, for his breath to return, for any sign of Changkyun’s loping figure to reappear among the jagged branches again.

The earth slips, creaking underfoot, and it propels him forward, this time with a slight limp as he senselessly pushes his way through a low bunch of hushed saplings, all of them bowing their slender heads at his twisting step with an inquisitive titter. Jooheon pays their hallucinatory whisperings no attention because there it is: the decaying house that had called so clearly from the entrance of the marshy clearing, wide and foreboding under the pale shadow of the moon.

It moans again, wailing long and low, and this time, Jooheon has a hard time telling himself it’s just the wind. The house’s shuttered windows clap meaninglessly at him, waving in and out of boxed frames, square holes of unfathomable blackness shifting to gape in his shrouded direction, staring him down with wide unblinking eyes.

A heavy weight sinks like a dead body from the top of his throat to the pit of his stomach as he swallows audibly, the entire scene filling his entire being with a sure sense of dread. The house calls to him with its unhinged, creaking wooden shutters again, and Jooheon has no doubt that Changkyun could only be in there - waiting for him.

The saplings giggle as he goes, like innocent wind-chimes, and Jooheon sets forth, dragging his swollen ankle all the way through the inky darkness, the empty house waiting and watching his struggle with three gaping holes of silence.

It’s strange because it looks like they’re laughing at him too.

 

-

 

The minute Jooheon steps a muddy, slippery sneaker onto the landing, an ancient creak resonates throughout the entire building, ending in a high-drawn lilt that oddly sounds like the trail end of someone’s teasing snicker. Jooheon shivers all the way down to his bones in his thin onesie and continues, step after careful step, making his way down the front porch and into the open maw of the nameless building.

Up close, the timeless decay is evident in extreme detail - from the glistening strings of moss inserting themselves into the numerous holes in the termite-ridden floorboards, to the light rain of slightly damp sawdust that flutters down past the edge of his hoodie with every inevitable creak of the house’s shifting weight. There’s a warm suffocating sheen settling itself over his skin, and Jooheon wonders if it’s truly a chilly October night and not a muggy journey into the swamps of New Orleans.

He decides it must be an entirely different universe when the house releases a collective sigh, its wooden frame shuddering with a heavy dip. Jooheon has a quick moment where he expects the roof and everything around it to collapse with a brittle snap above him, but the fragile structure only settles back with an everlasting groan as if it was a relic laid down to rest after eons of rudimentary existence.

He passes under the empty doorframe, no hint of a door having ever actually been present as not even a remnant of shadow hinges on the splintering dark wood. Inside, all he can see are the traces of tables and chairs, only implied at by pools of white moonlight that highlight what Jooheon assumes to be their sharp corners and edges. Otherwise, he makes his way through the abandoned living room like a blind man, acknowledging the blank irony of the situation with a hysterical twinge in the back of his panicking hindbrain because, _god,_ does he ever hope he won’t find anything living here - besides Changkyun of course.

Speak of the devil (he hopes not literally) a rapid set of wooden thumps that suspiciously resemble someone’s urgent running sounds from above, and Jooheon comes to the dreadful conclusion there’s nowhere to head now but upstairs.

So he does, a rising stream of wordless panic escalating to a screaming pitch through his mind, rising in urgency with each ascending step up the decomposing stairs. By the time he reaches the top of the winding bannister, his chest is filled so tightly with the frantic buzz of worry he has to breathe in short puffing exhales, each one a desperate attempt to contain the incomprehensible hysteria batting against his rib-cage for loud, echoing release into the watchful walls of the ancient house.

And yet the pounding pressure in his chest is nothing compared to the sudden skip in his pulse, when he looks up and stops breathing entirely for at least a second or so.

Changkyun stands there, still, a lone figure illuminated in the narrow vacuum of the decrepit hallway. At the end of it is the only intact window Jooheon has seen up to now, a round circle divided into four glass panes, all centered upon a second inner circle, melded together with fine, unbroken metal. With the bright rays of white shining through each untouched section, they erupt from behind Changkyun, outlining his every curve and edge in harsh black - Jooheon’s stilted breath stops again at the sight. It’s an unearthly image, almost unreal, and he invariably catches himself wondering what it would look like under the warmth and safety of daylight.

The moon’s rays bend and shift, melding themselves to the lines of Changkyun’s shadow, rushing to fill every empty space around him as he turns, slow and steady as if this were some scripted scene in a movie where the camera pans into a jump scare with ominous music that quickly gives everything away.

Except Jooheon saw none of this coming, not the impromptu onesies, not the unreadable glint in Changkyun’s eyes, not this rotting, unidentified house, not the mud seeping into his shoes and smoothing itself over his bruised foot - all of it sits like a layer of grime over his skin, too real and dirty for him to ignore without consequence.

Changkyun glances back at him with that weird crook in his neck again, and he smiles that same smile, light and mysterious as his voice rings out clear into the dusty stillness of the corridor stretched out between them. “Hyung,” he grins, cheeks bunching up with such tender affection Jooheon is almost taken aback. He turns his entire body to face the older boy before taking a steady step forward, then another, and another, until his vans are toe to toe with Jooheon’s ruined nikes. _Weird_ , Jooheon notes, the white edge of Changkyun’s sneakers are glaringly clean even through all the trekking past wet marshes and over rotten stains on the creaking floorboards.

There’s no moment for him to deliberate on it though, not when Changkyun suddenly brushes close enough Jooheon goes a little cross-eyed trying to look down at him, from trying to breathe in without somehow disrupting the intimate space between them. “Let’s play a game,” Changkyun whispers, a rumble of laughter in his low voice, eyes wrinkling in childish amusement, and - he’s gone, darting around Jooheon with light creaking hops down the stairs, leaving behind only a hollow brush of air imprinted with the barest trace of human warmth.

Jooheon spins with a slipping squeal on the heel of his aching foot and promptly chases after him.

 

-

 

He finds out there’s a practically endless supply of hallways and half-opened doors just on the first floor of the abandoned house alone. Jooheon races through room after room, chasing after the phantom impression of tapping footsteps and whispered laughter on the trailing echo of doors slamming open and closed on complete random chance.

He’s working his way through the seemingly impossible maze, each deserted room a dark, empty variation of the infinite few he’s already blundered through. There’s a dresser here, maybe a faceless portrait there that he hadn’t noticed before, but otherwise, he never stays long enough to allow himself to be distracted by the shadow in the corner of the room, which invariably ends up looking too much like a man after a second or two long of a pause, fueled by his overactive imagination. There’s nothing much to notice anyway, besides the general horror movie-esque creepiness of the empty rooms and a glaring lack of Changkyun in any of them.

There’s an indistinguishable sound down to the far left of the nth hallway he’s run into, and Jooheon forces himself to follow it, something about it indescribably reminiscent of Changkyun’s gasping laughter. It could be the high-pitched protest of the moss-ridden floorboards finally giving in under the prolonged pounding of his graceless feet, but he’s also irrationally sure, absolutely determined, that this time it will be Changkyun’s familiar crooked grin and wispy bangs hidden behind a rotten door and not the emptiness of grey spiderwebs and shadows playing at human shape.

He runs down the hallway, the distinct creak of his own stumbling pace drowning out any possible hints of Changkyun’s presence, but Jooheon can’t slow down, not when there’s an obvious diagonal of pale moonlight pouring into the otherwise dark hallway from the only door open at the foreseeable end of his wandering path. It could all very well be another clever trick, or even a coincidence, but his desperate heart urges him on with an impatient _ba-dump_ , every unsteady beat declaring for sure that Changkyun _must_ be in there.

Jooheon finally sets foot into the clean stretch of light and immediately shrinks back, clenching his eyes closed in a sudden moment of inexplicable blindness. When he opens them again, there’s a heavy ache in his lids as if he were waking up from being pummeled directly into the ground, but he forces them open, wide and unblinking, bulging as static air rushes past his pupils and up every ounce of smooth liquid glazed over his shaking sockets - because there he is, plain and quiet in the center of another untouched, round window, this time already turned around to face Jooheon with his eyes slitted in a small smile.

 _Find me_ , he mouths, bright mirth reflected in two perfect spheres in his eyes as he drops his head to the side in a questioning tilt, baring the stretched tendons of his neck to the floor above in an innocent gesture of tensed curiosity. Jooheon’s tongue is swollen, stuck to the roof of his mouth with a jumbled glue of words, questions, _confessions_ , but he can only watch, mud rooting his sneakers to the spot as the floor above Changkyun’s head collapses with an unholy, echoing _snap_ , bits of metal and wood striking downward until they impale into the younger boy’s unmoving body, one after the other until he's dashed into an unrecognizable mess of red and brown, splattered all over the dirty green of the moss-infested ground.

Blankly, Jooheon realizes in the white-noise of his mind, the other boy had been smiling, laughing even as he had been crushed into a bloody splatter. He collapses, smashing onto his knees, and screams into the stained shadow of Changkyun’s broken, onesie-clad body-

 

*

 

-and he wakes up, mouth still open as a hoarse shout escapes unbidden from his torn throat into the warm sunlight filtering into his room through perfectly modern, rectangular, unbroken windows.

He frantically glances downwards, scrabbling his inflamed knuckles over the worn familiarity of his hand-me-down quilted bedcovers. Jooheon grabs a tight handful of lumpy stuffing in his shaking grip, rubbing the cheap, lint-infested cloth over and over again in his palm until the slight burn pulsing at the pads of his fingers tells him that it’s enough - that this is all real.

He collapses onto his tiger print pillows with a soft exhale as his head dips into the thinning cushions, an audible drawl of relief floating out from his lax mouth. He can’t stop himself from burying his face into the muggy heat of his blankets with a giddy giggle, tangling his legs into every crease and fold like an unruly child, wriggling this way and that until the bedsheets are mussed up beyond a simple night of rough sleep, requiring something more along the lines of a thorough washing and scrutinized ironing to truly even them out.

Well, he could care less, Jooheon murmurs to himself, head dizzy with the pure stream of golden relief coursing through his veins - because none of it was real, not the terrible onesies, not Changkyun’s off-putting behavior, not the unrecognizable house that had invariably killed him - none of it because, everything, all of it, _it had all been a dream._

He’s never been the type of guy to have dreams as vivid as the ones from last night, but well, it had been right before Halloween after all. Jooheon leans back, lazily spreading his hand up past the hazy morning light, slowly deliberating on wandering thoughts as he watches yellow silk trickle past the pale pink dips in his fingers. Everything is a little too searing against his pulsating eyelids at this point in the early morning, and so he draws his chilled hand back under the covers, ducking the rest of his body after it with a dusty, allergy-inducing nuzzle into the sheets. Why does it matter if he was having graphic dreams about his best friend dying or not - because in the end, the only thing that is real is that he’s here now, in the comforts of a world where Changkyun is still breathing, still _alive_ \- and it’s going to stay that way as Jooheon doesn’t intend on taking any chances with the strange feeling simmering low in his gut right now.

He buries his face into the mix of worn shampoo and sunlit drowsiness, drifting back to the land of dreams with his mind absolutely made up: there’s no way he’s going to even step one foot outside of his apartment today, much less allow himself to end up in a floppy, ill-fitting onesie, ankle-deep in muddy sludge, faced with an old abandoned mansion. He smiles with a soft puff of breath against his flattened pillows, eyelids half-dragging over unfocused pupils as he awaits sleepy, peaceful freedom from his frazzled stream of conscious.

Or at least, until his phone buzzes under his welted cheek with an odd pulse of familiarity, something he can’t quite wrap his unfocused mind around, much less the tangled puppet strings of his bleary fingers.

His thumb digs into the smooth dip of the home button with a heavy _click_ , immediately unlocking the dark screen with a burst of piercing white-blue light, jutting into his watering pupils until the small pinpricks of pain eventually rearrange themselves into vaguely recognizable lines of text through the haze.

Jooheon squints, heart squeezing all the way to the top of his throat as that strange twisting in his gut comes again, pulling his insides tight to the point of nausea as he waits for his hesitant sight to focus.

 _Thank god,_ he sighs, heart fluttering back down to its proper position between his ribs, spastic fireworks popping in muted yellows and greens as his lids flicker closed for just a moment of weak relief. Hyunwoo’s contact name stands stark still on the otherwise plain white sheen of his screen, completed succinctly with a very recognizable emoji:

 

 _appa_ _ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ:_ there’s a package for you

 

Jooheon’s hummingbird heart picks up pace again, battering out a quick tempoed drumbeat against his bones and up his throat as his mind jumps like a mixed track, skipping and rewinding over those five words, attempting without any real finesse to analyze the blank meaning behind them. In the end, he settles on typing out a plain “ _what package”_ with cramped fingers, his stomach stirring up a tense storm as he half-huddles under the rumpled bedcovers in dreaded silence.

 

 _appa_ _ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ:_ a onesie

 

The hummingbird pauses in its erratic pecking, daggered wing tips sticking into his delicate insides with a painful jolt of horror. The phone tilts, slipping crookedly out of his numbed fingers like a pebble rounded, smoothed, and forgotten by the ocean’s driven tides, and in his shock, Jooheon barely manages to catch it an inch away from his unsuspecting nose. He rolls onto his side, propping himself up with the lumping stuffing of his mattress as he taps back a shaky reply, the circuits in his racing brain sparking and fizzing with an unlimited rush of potential scenarios.

 

 _joohoney:_ is this a joke changkyun set you up for

 _joohoney:_ because ha

 _joohoney:_ real funny

 

He awaits Hyunwoo’s answer, practically curled up onto the very edge of his tiny twin bed, the tell-tale itch of nervous sweat prickling at the base of his scalp even as his exposed cheeks are flush with cold from the broken heating system in his apartment.

But, well, nothing ever comes. Not for ten minutes on end. When Jooheon finally decides to call in a fit of frenzied desperation, it only goes through to Hyunwoo’s awkwardly recorded voicemail before he’s cut off from the older man’s hesitant mumbling with a jarring _beep_.

There’s no sign of Hyunwoo ever intending to reply, so Jooheon resorts to stalking down the perpetrator of this elaborate joke. He flicks through his open chats, millions of lines of texts scrolling in and out of his focused stare until the screen bounces back down, protesting against the strained pull from his still-moving finger. Changkyun’s messages are nowhere in sight, with the last thing in his history only being a text about a pizza delivery from three months ago Jooheon had absentmindedly forgotten to delete. Surely he must have texted Changkyun more recently than three months ago, right?

His phone proves otherwise: in fact, according to its sterile screen, Changkyun doesn’t exist at all. His fingers fly across the cracked glass surface, opening up contact lists, photos, age-old group chats, but there’s no indication that any hint of the younger boy was ever present at any time on his phone or ever within his life.

Jooheon falls back, throwing a bare arm over his shaking pupils, phone clutched tightly in hand. The birds sing through his fully intact windows in ignorant bliss, and the sun strokes over him with a mother’s shushing caress. His throbbing mind pulls him back to yesterday’s strange dream, and Jooheon fills his lungs up with a freezing inhale of biting anxiousness and sits up from the bed with a lurching sense of vertigo, a strange swirl of deja vú shuddering in blinking red dots behind his lids.

It’s off to the post office he goes.

 

-

 

The shallow layer of unsettlement in his stomach only boils deeper, stirring with an occasional wave that drags across the surface of his perpetual anxiety with an unhurried sweep of unidentified emotion, something dark and meaningful waiting just under the surface of deceptively calm waters.

Jooheon jams on a plain snapback over his unruly bed head, glancing at his reflection out the edge of his peripheral vision. He steps out of his room and down the hall, hooking his arms into the sagging pocket of his old high school track hoodie, gripping his phone and keys within the worn cotton as he tries to assuage away the distinct feeling that somehow he left something behind.

He goes to toe on a pair of old Nikes at the door, stepping on the nagging emptiness inside his mind with a harsh tug of the synthetic rim of the shoe over the stubborn curve of his heel. His foot finally pushes in with a soft buff of impact against the worn sole, wedging down past his trapped index finger in a hot burst of rigid pain. It’s enough to preoccupy him with at the moment as he repeats the same difficult process with the other foot, until he’s standing with both dusty soles flat on the ground, both hands throbbing with a vague impression of pain, the perplexing sense of forgetfulness squashed like a trapped animal at the bottom of his shoe.

He treads a slow, steady path to the post office, a sequence of silent deliberation looping through his mind the entire way. The feeling he had quelled underfoot sticks stubbornly onto his soles with the persistence of a piece of over-chewed gum, haunting him again with the foggy terror of deja vú. Jooheon digs his fingers into the very cold, very real grooves his keys, smoothing them over the rounded corner of his phone, and reminds himself there’s nothing he could’ve forgotten, there’s nothing otherwise that could go wrong with the day. The looming emptiness inside his chest echoes the exact opposite, its wordless sentiment reverberating with the arcane uncertainty of the eternally expanding boundaries of the universe’s starry galaxies.

Jooheon blinks, slightly stunned at the wandering tangent of his own thoughts, but more so from the sudden appearance of the post office’s unassuming brick exterior. The building was a product of a generous, small-town fund, complete with intricately molded benches that sit empty and perpetually maintained flowers that pass by as nondescript and quiet on most days of the week, blending into the rest of the idyllic background with a nostalgic twinge of comforting, scenic existence.

There’s an "off" feeling about it though, something invisible that’s shifted over, somehow something wrong in just the slightest millimeter of the difference between _wrong_ and _right_. Jooheon imagines a vase of flowers see-sawing back and forth on the edge of a lace-covered table, angling for a sure moment of violent decline, then righting itself perfectly over and up from the delicate precipice of the table the next. The unstable porcelain continues its dangerous tease behind his blurry gaze, the unmarred curve of the container and the rotting brown of bowed flowers shaking in his mind’s eye as he digs his heels into the smooth gravel steps in front of the post office's entrance.

He pushes the door open with a tinkling chime of a tiny bell, some part of him hazily expectant of the sound as a familiar echo skims through the pathways of his mind. His feet drag him unwittingly to the desolate counter, each step tracing over a predetermined road even though Jooheon can’t recall the last time he had physically, willingly visited the post-office on the cozy corner of an early-morning street on his own.

The rasp of flimsy cardboard on worn granite pulls him out of the vivid sensation of color and shallow irritation playing through his mind. His muddled thoughts clear for the rarest moment of clarity as he’s finally confronted with the suspicious object that has been dragging his sluggish brain to all kinds of confusing conclusions ever since he received the cryptic text from Hyunwoo earlier in the morning.

The box lays still in the center of his vision, but when Jooheon opens his eyes in a slow blink he suddenly wonders whether or not he’s imagining the inexplicable shadow curling out from under the cardboard’s lifeless skin. He sets both palms flat around its squared edges, braced with wide pupils and shaking wrists for the moment the inanimate object begins rustling with some unimaginable creature waiting to escape from inside its sealed walls.

The hollow material presses flat under his tensed fingers, no sign of ever having held anything with a semblance of life inside its minuscule space. Jooheon gingerly grasps it with both hands, picking it up as if it were a lightly dozing infant. Something thumps innocently against a tilted side, and Jooheon shakes the box once, twice, holding its taped edges to his ear as if it were the ocean’s call from within the pursed lips of a conch shell.

All he can hear is the distinct rolling of something small and round, and the flat shifting of what he assumes to be a onesie he never ordered. The attendant bows in a jerky motion before returning to his dozing position against the counter, eyes glazed over as if he’s already forgotten Jooheon is still there.

He has a half a mind to wave a hand over the attendant’s glassy stare, but he pauses, scoffing internally at the uncanny hilarity of the situation. Honestly, there’s no reason for him to worry like this, not when he’s sure the poor guy is only a bit sleep-deprived and not some soulless shell running only on predetermined actions, turning on the mechanics of fate’s detached gears. He attempts his own non-verbal thank you, watching out of the upper corner of his eye as the dazed man’s equally distracted stare continues boring into the wall directly ahead, unwaveringly still even at Jooheon’s pointed greeting.  

 _Strange_ , he considers wordlessly, tucking the package underarm as he steps away from the counter and the glazed doll-eyed worker. His sneakers squeak across the empty floor, clean and smooth from an inscrutable duration of sterile disuse, and the thought of this cozy place slowly fading away into obscurity tugs sorely at his heartstrings. It compels him to chance a look at the dusty display of stamps in the forgotten corner of the tiny building. A sketch of a realistically rendered full moon catches his eye for a second before he’s inextricably drawn to a cartoonish depiction of a solar eclipse selling for only 560 won right next to it.  

Jooheon pauses, a numb feeling wiggling at the base of his brain, noiselessly asking for the cheap stamps. He can’t think of any plausible reason to buy them, not when the last time he sent out a physical letter was an invitation to his grandma for his high school graduation. Furthermore, his interest in astronomical matters is narrowly limited to only an occasional glance at the nighttime sky, acknowledging it with an appreciative hum before continuing on with his busy night of procrastination. And yet, his head continues to throb, and he can’t stop staring, gaze unblinking at the inexorable attractiveness of the plain stamps.

He can’t put his thumb on it, not on the strange sense that he should know something, that he should _remember_ something, but the memory only teases vaguely, hidden under layers of soft muscle and firing neurons. He can feel the certain shape of it, like the impression of a body part gone to sleep under prolonged pressure, still completely there but quickly fading into a haze of forgetfulness and dreamy obscurity.

Jooheon’s paused sense of time revolves back into movement, the morning light filtering cheerfully into view, birdsong flitting like a trickling river through the void inside his frozen mind. He blinks, eyes glancing over the galaxy-themed stamps one last time before hiking the package up into the cushioned crook of his arm and turning his back to the odd shadow in his inscrutable memory.

The door sings its musical greeting as he steps out, and Jooheon tightens his grip around the awkwardly balanced box, clenching his fingers in tight restraint against his clouded yearning for the meaningless postage stamps.

 

-

 

The taped package rips open with a jagged slash of worn scissors, gaping up at Jooheon with a sliver of a dark eye, and he squints back, hesitant even as he fails to make out anything among the heavy-duty tape and shreds of cardboard.

He breathes in and holds it still, quiet, in the apprehensive cage of his chest, and sticks a hand, shaking ever so slightly, into the shadowed cavern with a burst of brash courage, physically wincing as he does so.

Surprisingly (thankfully), his fingers only dip into the plain safety of cotton, and the air trapped between his ribs leaks out in a slumped sigh, leaving him temporarily drained of all strength. His lungs steadily pick up pace again, ballooning in and out as he hastily dumps out the contents of the torn apart box without a hint of fear.

A strip of yellow pools onto his lap, black stripes slashing through the bright, eye-searing color of the body to create the distinctive appearance of a bumblebee. Jooheon lifts up the costume, watching as a set of lumpy antennas and comically tiny wings flop into the light from his bedroom window. The onesie is horribly oversized, dragging like a piece of laundry still dripping wet from the wash, a limp imitation of sagging human skin pulling itself long and sallow before Jooheon’s widening eyes.

He sucks in a shuddering breath, mouth growing inextricably dry at the odd view hanging from his frozen hands. It’s too alike, _exactly_ similar to the one he had worn last night - from last night’s dream, that is. Which was, up until this moment, just a dream right?

Something pulses, warm and beating, in his lap, and he drags himself away from the growing horror of the garish yellow onesie to meet the round gaze of a ticking clock face. The costume is dropped to the side, its strange likeness to the one of Jooheon’s nightmare temporarily forgotten as he cautiously picks up the watch, interlacing coffee-brown leather straps between curious fingers.

The watch face is a round little thing, a glassy full moon just wide enough to cover up the space from the edge of his nail to the slight crook of the first joint in his index finger. It blinks rhythmically back up at his own flickering stare, red and black clock hands somehow already riveted into perfect motion, a skinny automaton readily equipped to track down every nuanced second, minute, and hour of his peculiar day.

Jooheon lays the watch flat against his palm, cradling the heated metal rim of the clock face into the equally warm flesh of his head. The leather straps dangle loosely from the tips of his fingers, soaking up every ounce of fever through his skin, melting and branding him in thin, rectangular strips. He peels the straps off with a pointed grip, half-expecting strips of blood and sinew to follow in a moment of delirium, but his hand remains wholly intact, albeit a bit chilled.

When he wraps the watch around his wrist, the entire body of the mechanism pulses in an earth-shattering heartbeat in tandem with his own, and the leather seems to fasten itself to his flesh again, leeching into his warmth with the ferocity of wriggling parasite. Jooheon turns his wrist in small increments, watching the straps flop this way and that, the buckle clinking lightly against his curved veins. It looks, for all appearances, like a normal watch that’s about to slip off the moment he angles his hand too far - but he doesn’t dare, not when the leather is seeping into every pore, every available crevice it comes into contact with, until his hand is burning and limp with the intensity of a wasp's sting, the heat swollen and spread all the way to his blotchy orange-pink fingertips.

Jooheon bites off a broken curse, the sinking sunset in his numbed hand spreading with an aching drag through his veins until he can practically see the outline of his thumb wavering back and forth through the darkening air, visibly trembling. The metal of the unbuckled clasp whispers cool promises across his boiling skin, and Jooheon blindly loops his other hand under the frantic pulse of his wrist, fumbling blindly for the other half of the clasp until his ungainly fingers slip metal over metal with a muted _click._

The heat doesn’t recede, but it does calm to a simmering boil, an illusion of stillness maintained only at the smooth unmarked plane on the back of his hand. He closes his eyes and presses the edge of the ticking watch-face to his mouth in a chapped graze of skin against metal. The fine rim pulses with the technical passing of each second, of every minute, and Jooheon is reminded of the distinct liveliness of a fleshy, red heart, pulling and pushing the blood through his body with the roaring authority of a perpetual machine.

A pinprick of pain sears right through the center of his wrinkled brows, shooting past every buzzing nerve until it hits right at the center of his cerebrum with a brilliant eruption of pure white sparks. He opens his eyes, some invisible vein twitching uncontrollably under an eye socket, and he begins groping around for his phone. He finds it wrapped up within the thin folds of the horrible onesie, and he holds it up with his free hand, clicking it open as he compares it side by side to the back of his throbbing wrist.

The watch clicks ahead on its scheduled journey, chugging right along on time with the slight numbers illuminated across the spiderweb of cracks lacing themselves over the surface of his phone.

The hour turns - the watch chirps, the electronic numbers change under glass cracks with a hint of minute distortion, and Jooheon blinks at the rumpled yellow pile collapsed before him.

He remembers what to do next.

 

-

 

He’s thought this thought many times today, and on the empty steps of his apartment complex, facing an equally abandoned street, Jooheon considers again how strange the world seems to be on this Halloween. He picks at the yellow pooling over the line of his wrist, bound barely in place by the cuff of leather strapped like a vice to his skin. The watch face glows bright, Jooheon’s own miniature moon to mirror its heavenly counterpart that’s beginning to loom overhead now. 9:59 pulses into 10:00 in a moment of pure silence, and Jooheon finds himself holding his breath until the minute hand shifts ever so slightly to 10:01, and the buzzing hum of moths flicking themselves into burning street lamps filters back into the world on a rush of hot air.

The wind whispers lowly through the seemingly deserted neighborhood, kicking up gravel and stirring the dusty, fallen bodies of seared moths along its way, gifting them with another phantom chance at flight - if only for a few meaningless seconds. The stuffed felt antennas on the top of his drooped hood bob erratically before landing with a soft thump against his back, leaving Jooheon’s ear tips exposed to the bite of late autumn weather. Well, he decides, scanning along the empty strip of the road, across the line of apartment windows gaping at him with darkened eyes and locked mouths, at least he can see without garish yellow continuously flapping around at the edge of his vision.

At the slightest, smallest corner of his eye, there’s a clear movement of a shadow, the silhouette of a figure shifting just barely enough to be noticed at the end of the street. Jooheon turns to stare, both eyes wide open, unusually relieved at the appearance of another human besides him on this notably abnormal day.

He squints harder when the outline of the mystery figure blurs with motion, and he sticks his head out past the chipped railing even further until he realizes - the mystery figure is waving at him. The only other person he’s seen today, besides the doll-like attendant, swipes enthusiastically with an outstretched palm through the foggy air one last time before Jooheon is faced with a hunched back as they meld into the impenetrable darkness, loping off into what seems to be the very edge of the physical world itself. Jooheon scrambles to his feet, worn soles pounding past strips of cracked cement, compelled to follow by the tick in his heartbeat, the unspeakable panic flooding his closed throat.

When he slips past the same nebulous boundary, there’s a distinct atmosphere that befalls him, crowding into every space until he can’t quite remember what the well-lit street of his home even looked like - not when each quickened footstep carries him past an interplay of shadows, cutting back and forth his path with indistinguishable chatter as domestic trees suddenly erupt into a jungle, weaving into an inescapable cage of warped canopies above head. There are open spots between contorted branches, draped with shaking vines and blinking, golden-eyed creatures, where slivers of moonlight shine through and illuminate narrow spotlights of white in the seemingly endless road in front of him.

Jooheon plays a heart-pounding game of connect the dots, anxiously glancing downward for the fraction of a second every time his black nikes blend into bone-pale pools, watching for something, _anything_ , that could be stuck to his ankle, for the irrational trace of sludge or shadow clinging to his weathered heels. There is never actually anything, nothing but the vague outline of his shoe, but still, he doubts with every beam of moonlight he finds himself passing through.

Time seems to flow backward in fine increments of rising sand, catching Jooheon in an impossibly looped hourglass as he continues running, moving forward past spotted patterns and hunched trees that he swears he already saw blocks ago. There’s a persistent niggling in the frantic space of his mind, pressing him that he’s somehow been here before, that he’s done all this before, but Jooheon can’t remember, doesn’t want to - at least, not until he catches up to the waving figure from before who hadn’t even left behind the slightest hint of his existence, leaving it to the mercy of Jooheon’s wandering imagination.

The uncaged greenhouse closes in on him with its flourishing wilderness, forcing him to forge on, sprinting without rest until his brain is too deprived of oxygen to offer any more conspiratorial murmurs to fuel the tendrils of vague eldritch horror emanating from his overactive imagination. Jooheon runs and runs until he can’t think, until he’s a panting, sweating mess - until he stumbles to a stop, unable to push his body even an inch further.

There’s sore acid pouring down into every creaking joint, gluing his lower half to a space caught between moonlight and shadow as he attempts to draw big mouthfuls of air up through his heaving, charred lungs. His efforts are panicked and uneven, serving only to aggravate an already failing system, something he only begins to realize once crowds of black spots begin to creep in from the corner of his blinking vision. He struggles to clear them away, cupping his flushed palms over the static buzz within his eyes as his chest forcefully slows, dealing out gasps of air with heavy meticulousness until the sweat winding down his neck dries cold and patchy along the ridges of his bent spine.

He straightens after an eternity of innumerable minutes, dread pooling exhaustive and aching in the indented curve of his back, settling itself there like a snake coiled in wait for the storms of winter. There’s still a tangible knot stuck in his dry throat, but his lungs are working smoothly, exhaling away the last traces of grey fluff left intertwined over his corneas.

Jooheon blinks, looking up, vision clear, breath even - and there they are, the figure from before, clad in a sagging brown costume, still lit perfectly from underneath a column of spotless moonlight. Jooheon steps forward, audibly kicking up pebble and gravel with the intent of alerting the other person to his presence, pressing his lips opened and closed as he tries to summon up words from the curdled taste of sweat and fear souring his tongue.

He doesn’t need to think about it any longer, not when the illuminated figure turns, crescent smile smooth and pretty under a gleaming halo of white, a hint of barely-there dimples dipping into shallow shadows over his cheeks. Jooheon’s lungs catch fire again, burning as “ _Changkyun-”_ tumbles out in a haze of choked silence from his open mouth.

Changkyun only beams fondly, mouth tilting open to show a line of straight teeth as he takes a step, then two, backwards until he’s at a direct diagonal from Jooheon’s own shaking position. He shakes off the oversized wolf hood with the innocent mannerism of a wet puppy and holds up his right wrist, cocked as if checking a watch, glancing down at his bare skin with a shadowed flicker of an arched stare.

He taps the tip of a finger to the prominent curve of a bony, bent wrist before mouthing in that serene, deliberate way of his that Jooheon has never been able to quite grasp after all this time.

“ _Did you find me?”_

“What-”, the other boy starts, stunned beyond belief as his drained brain fights to pick through every incomplete piece in his memory, every bit of dialogue that sits floating and forgotten within his mind. Jooheon watches as scenes play past his shaking pupils - Changkyun shivering in the collar of a too wide sweater, Changkyun’s eyes crinkling as he had taken Jooheon’s cheap stamps in hand, Changkyun running, Changkyun grinning, laughing, whispering as he had been crushed into a visceral pulp of blood and bone inside a creaking ancient house at the end of an endless street.

Jooheon’s stomach drops, and his knees scream in painful comprehension as he glances wildly at the black forest emerging out from around him, exactly like the one from before, the one from his _dreams_.

Changkyun immediately seals a finger over his lips, sternly meeting Jooheon’s frantic stare with the calm grey storm of his own gaze as he motions again to the cocked angle of his bare wrist.

The older boy checks the silent watch face with a snap of his head, scrabbling to push the sinking costume sleeves up over the leather digging into his skin before something inevitably passes, before time irreversibly rearranges itself and takes Changkyun with it. The hands point steadily at 11:59, but the skinny second hand is running fast, turning past tick after tick before Jooheon can even catch up with it in his horrified trance.

The moment he looks up, he’s almost immediately blinded by a set of oncoming headlights, approaching with the deafening roar of a sputtering engine, each rev of gears kicking up a cloud of gasoline that contaminates Jooheon's body inside and out with a raw coating of oil. He opens his mouth, struggling to take in gasping gulps of air, burnt tar invading his mouth as he attempts to keep his sense of smell plugged.

He uses every last ounce of strength to pull himself back, forcefully tripping backwards on rapidly failing knees even as Changkyun remains still, hand dropped loosely at his side as the hot gas from the oncoming truck ruffles his hair into a flying, tangled crown around his grinning visage.

Obtrusive beams blare, too loud and too late as they converge over into a perfect single line directed at Changkyun’s awaiting silhouette, luminescent and clear before Jooheon’s frozen eyes. It’s like the descending of God’s archangels upon the darkness of the earth for the first time since the twisted conception of mankind - but this is it, this the end, this is the death of it all - and a sob rips its way through Jooheon’s tar-coated throat because there is no victorious bugle, no opening of heaven’s clanging gates, no blazing of fire and hope within the sky as Changkyun’s slight body crumples with a sickening _crunch_ of impact, flying across the ground as a lump of twisted flesh and mutilated bones.

Jooheon’s knees finally give out, and he falls hard to the shadowy pavement, gibberish spilling out from his mouth, each unintelligible sound covered in a layer of dust, oil, and tears. Changkyun’s broken body bends with a burst of ungainly movement, joints spasming in all the wrong directions as he catches Jooheon’s filmy gaze with a snapped neck and a bloody smile.

There are dark rivulets threading down each cheek, staining his straight white teeth red, and Jooheon stares, looking into grey eyes that glitter with the last remnants of life as a pair of scarlet, ripped lips painstakingly form two last words in a breathless whisper before they freeze, flat and dead in a defunct grin, the two grey moons of light snuffed out from Changkyun’s dulled irises as a last testament to his short-lived life.

 _Find me_ , Jooheon’s fragmented mind stutters, replaying the image of Changkyun mouthing it over and over again across his swollen eyes. A foghorn blares, and he blinks up to see yellow headlights turned on him, air streaming towards him on a hot squeal of rubber tires. The watch chirps from his wrist, and there are no numbers, no hours, no minutes, no seconds, only empty clock hands and a blank face staring up at him as the truck thunders closer and closer with an ugly siren’s call, and Jooheon clenches his eyes shut-

 

*

 

-and snaps them open to the uncoordinated pattern of his lumpy comforter, pulled up all the way to his clean, tear-free cheeks. He gasps, choking on mouthfuls of stale cotton, blinking away the crumbled stickiness of sleep as he shifts unsteadily onto his elbows, fully awake and scanning over every inch of his safe, familiar, well-lit room.

There are no hideous, sagging, yellow onesies, no heavy-set trucks turning his best friend into a mess of jutting bones and splattered organs - only the plain morning song of brown sparrows and the uneven calm of his rumpled bedding keeping him comfy, pleasant, death-less company.

Dazedly, he watches tracks of sunlight strain through his grimy windows and wonders if he could be dreaming...again.

His phone reads ten in the morning with a machine’s emotionless precision, Tuesday, October 31st punched in underneath it like a blatant slap to the face. Jooheon drops his aching head onto the raised cushion of his bent knees and thinks back with painful intensity - forcing himself to remember every blood-stained detail from the night “before,” a steady ticking echoing through his ears as his brain begins to wind itself backward. Changkyun’s awkwardly tangled body pulls itself upright, twisted and ungainly in the most unnatural manner, and Jooheon hears his own cries gurgling into forced silence as he himself rises shakily, reversing sloppily through shadowed, endless streets until he’s jerkily handing back the mystery package and slumping his shock-frozen body into the dark comforts of his bed.

The whirring tape doesn’t stop there though, and Jooheon smashes his lids even tighter until there are white sparks dotting through his flashing memories, marring the edge of Changkyun’s cheery smile as it reforms from under collapsed woodwork and floating metal beams. Jooheon can feel the retch of bile stirring up within him, but he keeps his eyes shut and watches, watches as the yellow blob of his own body strides out of the abandoned house, Changkyun’s own brown outline following him through the wet marshes and whispering forests until they pass through the same strange, nonexistent and yet still-there road, and Jooheon is striding out into daylight again, re-placing tacky lunar stamps, closing his wandering eyes to the view of Changkyun’s too-wide sweater neck, and finally, burying himself into the naivety of his half-awake complaints, mouth closing in a stuttered snore as the sunlight fractures in its morning stream, waiting for the day to begin.

And it does; it has been, Jooheon realizes through the jumbled haze of vague memories in his mind, for at least three days now, in the exact same manner, give or take a few details here and there. He realizes this through the throbbing pain in his head, through the sweat matted to his palms spiking through the air like the crunch of tires over gravel from yesterday’s events. Or could it even be counted as yesterday, he wonders as a heady spike lodges itself right between his shaking eyes, inflicting a burst of stinging pain at the complicated implications of that thought.

He doesn’t know if there was a “yesterday,” or if there was even a day before, but there’s a leather-bound watch face still ticking methodically against his wrist, pulsing with the same detached urgency from his last set of memories, and Jooheon realizes with a surge of dreaded clarity that his time has already begun to run out.

He swallows down the trickle of panic and reaches for his phone, mind racing through every smeared recollection from the last two October 31sts, hastily picking the shards of his memories into a tentative order in order to offer a hesitant picture of what will take place next.

There’s a simple block of text highlighted across the dimmed home screen of his phone, and Jooheon can’t suppress the flicker of surprise that runs through him even as the incomplete puzzle in his head contains the exact piece that warns him of this very moment. Considering the fact that the message is only five words long, it could only be an absolute coincidence that wording is still the same.

What isn’t the same though, are the wide-eyed rabbits popping up across the contact name, identifying the sender as Hoseok. Jooheon mentally rifles through the uneven pieces of his incomplete memory, recalling that it was Hyunwoo last time, and well, Changkyun when all of this had begun. The same words sit boldly across the screen, starkly challenging him to a reply, and Jooheon gives in, deciding to test the inner workings of fate with a shaky press of his fingertips to the buzzing interface of his keyboard.

His answer comes just moments later, confirming his dreaded curiosity with two words, plain and blunt as the blue film of the screen reflects back their bold connotation into Jooheon’s jittery stare.

 

 _wontokki hyung / (⁎˃ᆺ˂)＼:_  there’s a package for you

 _joohoney:_ what package?

 _wontokki hyung / (⁎˃ᆺ˂)＼:_ a onesie

 

Jooheon sends another text, but it’s been pointless the moment Changkyun died and he ended up here again in this exact scenario for at least the third time - or God knows, it could’ve been an infinite number of times spanning the everlasting stretch of time itself.

As expected, his arbitrary question receives no reply, and after a few scarce moments more of waiting, Jooheon follows the next ragged puzzle piece in his faltering path of memories. Knowing he won’t be receiving even a peep from his phone for the rest of the day, Jooheon tosses it clear across his bed, leaving it buried and forgotten under mountains of various blankets as he untangles his bare feet from twisted sheets, setting them onto the cluttered floor and reluctantly allowing them to drag him out of the only brief reprieve he’ll have for today.

A pair of stained college sweatpants are pulled on over wrinkled boxers, and Jooheon can’t help but pause, hoodie half-on, and wonder if he was wearing the very same clothes when Changkyun was crushed to bits, or maybe even the night before that, where he had died under the weight of fate’s cruel chance.

Jooheon’s throat tightens at the thought, and he wills his aching joints to move again, pulling the old high school track hoodie past his bare arms and settling it over the rest of his goose-bumped body. He makes sure to carefully pick through his scraggly mountain of socks with a purpose this time, scrutinizing for a mismatched pair he would usually never wear on any given occasion. It ends up being a hideous gift he vaguely recalls receiving from Minhyuk on a late birthday celebration, and a warm scoff pushes its way out of his sealed lips as he wriggles numb toes into printed eggs slapped over pink neon strips of bacon.

The reluctant look is finished with a wayward cap he snags off of the formless edge of a centuries-old beanbag chair, and the thought of re-doing his faded dye job flickers through his mind when he catches a glimpse of his own red-eyed reflection in the hallway mirror. He stares, pausing to examine the bruised shadows sagging out from under stained lashes and shakes himself away from the paralyzing image, ducking his gaze downward to yank the brim of his cap tight past the line of sight.

The watch clicks in counting pulses against his sleeved wrist, propelling him to the door with the grim reminder of the trickling hour and his own limited time - of Changkyun’s ever-encroaching death.

Jooheon jams the cap even tighter over his head, tangling the dry ends of his hair in a flat mess over his skull and follows the quick-paced beat of the watch out the front door and into the day. Dimly, he wonders how many of his days have started exactly like this since the first commencement of this punishing, torturous cycle.

The road only observes him in a stretch of pristine sunshine and silence, answering his question in its own empty, mysterious way. Jooheon sets forward onto the path after a beat of aching consideration - he doesn’t know either.

 

-

 

The tiny bell jingles its light-hearted welcome as Jooheon pushes open the post office door, nudging numbly through the clouded daze in his mind, the sharp spike of the sound reminding him of every consequent event that will inevitably be due to follow.

The setting is just the same: a cozy, dusty, deserted building filled deceptively with the lull of morning’s gentle sunshine as if it were only a normal weekday where no one else but the delivery man would pay a habitual visit to this homey, forgotten place sitting open on the corner of the street. Jooheon is here now though, has been here for God knows how many times, how many days he’s been reliving the twisted past step by agonizing step.

It’s the same doll-like worker at the counter again, ducking up from his sleepy reverie to greet Jooheon with a pre-meditated smile, head cocking like a puppet with slipping ball joints. He shivers and tries not to stare directly into the man’s glassy gaze, mumbling out something that vaguely resembles his name as he fidgets with the frayed pieces of string peeking out over the grey hem of his sleeves.

Of course, it has to be fate when the worker understands his incomprehensible whisper and turns away from the counter, presumably to search for the package that’s followed Jooheon day in and day out with the sole intent of providing him a piece of appropriate clothing for the occasion. He apprehensively watches the lone worker fumble around back with a calculated sense of clumsiness and realizes he’s somehow already obtained a part of the perpetual package. The watch winks up at him faithfully, bound warm and pulsing around his wrist as the only real remnant of yesterday’s gory events - besides Jooheon’s own set of graphically detailed memories.

The worker’s uncanny figure shuffles over on marionette strings, medium sized box proffered before him on cupped palms. The leather around his wrist seems to hum with life, compelling Jooheon forward to the commencement of another inevitable cycle. The package trades hands with a soft _thump_ , and the watch continues its steady, ticking course.

Jooheon observes the thin black hand strike pointedly at 11 and turns sharply on his heel, heading out the door with another colorful clanging of bells, signaling the echo of another fabricated day.

 

-

 

Some gaudy yellow onesie again. The antenna-ed hoodie bobs towards him in silent acknowledgment, and Jooheon’s throat inexplicably tightens itself into a dry knot of dread. Changkyun’s died in front of this flimsy thing, Jooheon’s _practically_ died in it, and he’s not exactly excited for any of that to happen again.

But what can he do? It’s the same day in and out of a loop, a self-propagating cycle - like the ouroboros that eats its own tail in a fit of destruction - Jooheon wonders if he’s begun biting at his own metaphorical one by now.

The echo of the hour inexplicably rings loud, a ping of metal shooting its way through the recesses of his mind as the tiny clock face blinks up at him from his wrist. Jooheon pulls himself out of his muddled state and wobbles, unsteady and creaking to his feet as the mechanical beats inside his head drive him forward. It’s inevitable, the coming of nightfall, the catalyst of the perpetual cycle, but Jooheon’s mind is an Arctic pool, glazed over in a sluggish sheen of ice, his thoughts trapped in a current of strange forgetfulness.

 _What else can he do?_ A shadow passes across his vision. Jooheon blinks, dazed-

-and meets the bleeding eye of the setting sun instead. The cold stone of his apartment steps digs into the skin of his back with an unrelenting edge of harshness as if in a blatant reminder of what his waking hours have been reduced to. He tries to summon up any recollection of moving through his room, of pulling on the onesie he’s clad in now, of hours just passing by, but he’s only met with the blank, unflinching stare of the watch on his wrist and the slight tremors making their way through his outstretched palms. He exhales in a long drawl, waiting for the breath rattling around his rib cage to perch and settle like an errant canary. The wind runs its leaf-strewn fingers past the edge of his exposed cheek, twisting through his tangled crown of hair before finally stroking pads of ice across the fan of his eyelashes, soothing him in dry, intangible murmurs of _wait and you’ll see._

Jooheon’s lids fall shut to the slow chilling rhythm of autumn’s song, and he waits for time to begin passing in the unhurried, meaningless way it so often does now.

 

-

 

Night falls, and Jooheon opens his eyes, strangely alert as if he had just woke up from a long draught of dreamless sleep.

The moths are out, fluttering around the hazy edges of light from nearby street lamps on a sheen of falling dust, turning the air into a curtain of shining silk. Perhaps, this is the actual dream, Jooheon blinks dazedly, rubbing away the glistening specks that seem to have made their way into his sleep-crusted eyes.

There’s the indistinct hum of a nearby street lamp, its bulb pulsing in and out of existence, spasming at the very end of its coiled lifeline. Jooheon stares with bated breath, his own insides clenching in apprehension with every sizzling flicker until finally, the bulb snaps in a brilliant explosion of burnt glass and popping filaments. The silk dust from the moths fall, drenched in a shattered kaleidoscope of amber light, breaking apart the quiet of the night into speckled bits of wild flame.

Jooheon presses back into the hard railing of the stairs, the red of the setting sun pooling inside the cavern of his wide-open eyes. He watches, chest tight and breaths shaking as soft, unassuming moth wings begin catching fire from the volatility of their own dusty residue, and their muffled fluttering grows harsh and frenzied until they finally reach their zenith and disappear in a wisp of shifting ashes, dried bodies whisked away without a moment’s notice by the grasping fingers of the night’s impartial wind.

Bits of grey float, itching and intrusive, into his shell-shocked eyes, and he has to bite off the choked scream stuck in his throat as he digs his fingers past his teary vision, picking out the ashy dust with the shaking grasp of a drunkard. The smoothness of his open cornea twitches, shiny and solid against his probing touch, and Jooheon feels a fresh trail of tears leak down the valley of his cheeks, immediately cooling with a pointed whisper from the night wind.

Jooheon smears at the ruddy strings of grime, dampened and viscous over his skin as his mind pounds with images of burning moths, webs of interlacing wings that seem to be bursting with yellow light - of black obscurity, staring and spinning as it regards him with its one violent eye, prompting him with only a single, unobscured word - _dreaming?_

No, Jooheon isn’t so sure of it anymore, not sure of much anymore, but the dried layers of moth dust over his icy cheeks and the tactile wetness slicked over the tips of his fingers ground him in the moment, reminding him that the true events of the night have yet to come.

A blurry figure flickers at the edge of his unsteady vision, beyond the fog of amber smoke and charred, silk wings, waving calmly at him with the enthusiasm of an old friend.

Jooheon chases after Changkyun’s familiar silhouette without a second’s hesitation, all thoughts and wonderings of deadly dreams forgotten. 

 

-

 

The dappled path stretches before him, everlasting in its suffocating stillness. Changkyun skips through pools of glistening moonlight and occasional blocks of solid streetlight before Jooheon loses him to the midnight shadows of clustered willow trees. Jooheon passes by the same exact spots, desperately re-tracing the other boy’s unmarked steps as the leaves sing to him in hushed rustling, as the dark metal of the straight street lamps creak forebodingly above head - as the moon looks on, pale silent face turned towards their chase in detached amusement.

Jooheon’s ankles throb with every jolting step against the inky cement, crying out when stiff bone shifts over straining muscle as he attempts to follow after Changkyun’s fleet-footed trail. Enough of the twilight scenery blurs in the passing that Jooheon is convinced he must be going around in circles, that he’s long lost Changkyun to the forest shade and the younger boy has already met his inevitable demise.

Jooheon’s head pounds even harder with every step, and he closes his eyes, clenching them shut to stop himself from collapsing right then and there. _How many times has it been_ , he chants to himself, a mantra that he repeats over and over to keep his legs moving over the looping path. The thing is, he has no idea - he can’t remember anymore, how many days he’s spent waiting, how many nights he’s spent chasing after Changkyun only to see him massacred before him in every which way possible, leaving him broken and mangled with only the porcelain smile of a glassy-eyed marionette.

The echo of a footstep sounds from far up ahead, and Jooheon finally stumbles through an outcropping of bushes - and steps right into the wet, open expanse of a marsh field. He looks down to see his sneaker caught in a tangle of rustling reeds and mushy earth, rising up in shining mounds around his foot, trapping it there with sticky, squelching pleas. Jooheon’s face twists with every dragging step, forcefully wrenching his leg out as he sinks a little deeper into the mush each time he attempts to pull himself forward. The wind brings around a different scent in the air, something deep and raw that settles itself into the base of his brain, calming him with a shot of clean fauna and rich waters.

The moon seems rounder, brighter than ever before, he observes with a hazy glance upwards, splashing through the untouched mud, unbothered with the wet drag of the thin yellow fabric of his pantlegs through the eager marshland. Jooheon thinks about closing his eyes and falling, willingly, into the fresh mud and laying there as it slowly embraces him in a casing of earth and water, pulling him down for a life of timeless sleep.

His drunken musings end with the sudden silence of the field, the bobbing stalks of the fox-tail reeds sanding stock-still without the perpetual presence of the night’s wind. In the strange moment of absolute solitude, Jooheon turns towards Changkyun’s beckoning figure standing directly across from him amidst the quiet hush of dried ferns, the only spot of movement within all the stillness. He waves, swiveling with an uncanny sleekness as Jooheon pulls at his molded steps, desperate to catch up to him.

The wordless chase ends as quick as it began with Changkyun’s slim shadow slipping through the crack of a dilapidated mansion door and Jooheon following suite before the unearthly groaning of the house can shatter his shaking resolve any further.

The nameless mansion is entirely a realm of darkness inside, broken up only by the occasional blocks of bone-white moonlight from jagged, smashed windows lining the indomitable interior of blackened walls. Jooheon’s gaze flies wildly to every hint of a shadow, to every sharp creak of a floorboard, but the outline of Changkyun’s flitting figure is nowhere to be found.

Jooheon turns his cheek upwards, begging, desperate, to the cold gaze of the full moon glancing down at him through the open eye of the mansion’s leveled spire - and there he stands: Changkyun, steady and waiting, a solid line of color in the midst of black and pure white light as he leans over the second floor with a flippant hold around the curve of a bannister.

Jooheon’s breath catches in a silent heaving sound, his open mouth forming syllables that suspiciously resemble a certain someone's name. Changkyun only looks on as if he were posed for a camera, eyes glinting with something that seems to beckon and warn at the same time. Jooheon pretends to ignore the swirling darkness in the other’s clear irises, and he follows the wind’s whistling siren call up to Changkyun’s stock-still, waiting silhouette.

The stair steps creak dangerously underfoot, each ancient groan deepening with his continued ascent upwards, but their ominous cries go unheeded in Jooheon’s singularly focused sight on the younger boy. _Close,_ he’s so close - just a step, maybe two more and then Changkyun will turn, he’ll be real, _alive_ , under Jooheon’s grasp and-

The snap of rotting wood comes like a shock of ice-water to his adrenaline ladened mind. His legs are rooted in place, aching from the sudden stop, but the only thing that registers is the flash of Changkyun’s black gaze, directly connecting with Jooheon’s shaking own for the longest of seconds before the world is rushing back with a sickening thump of soft flesh and brittle wood. The numbing pang in his frozen legs finally gives, and Jooheon crashes to his knees, sprawling over the uneven stairs as an uncontrollable shaking begins spreading through his chilled body.

He inadvertently peeks through the slits of the railing and the wave of tremors seems to amplify tenfold, like the coming of a mid-day tide as it aims to crash itself in full destructive force against the rocky shores, like its last spiteful sacrifice against the scorned world. The crash is coming soon, Jooheon realizes, exhaustion breaking out in a sheen of cold sweat under his dirtied onesie. He glances back down at Changkyun’s twisted body before immediately jerking away, gasping into a cupped palm as dry spasms begin seizing his already heaving stomach. The watch is running wild against his wrist, and in his mind, the methodical ticking is melding into the frantic sequence of a broken timer. Like the ticking of a bomb, Jooheon knows time is running out.

He scrambles over to the jagged edge of the banister again, meeting Changkyun’s glassy stare from all the wrong angles. His stomach twists, queasy and empty from the sight of snapped bone protruding like an insect’s segmented leg out from under pierced skin, highlighted so conveniently under the moon’s white spotlight. The loud ticking in his head only accelerates, so Jooheon forces his gaze upwards to the porcelain curve of Changkyun’s eerily frozen smile - and waits. It comes moments later as he had expected, as he had _remembered_ , a slight hint of movement and Changkyun’s dead lips are twitching back to life.

 _Find me_ , they say, an empty wish that is blown away by an invisible draft, spreading like bits of dandelion fluff into the open space of Jooheon’s soundless scream as the world goes dark. In the bare recesses of his fading conscious, there is one last echo of a mechanical tick before even that stops as well.

Time, he realizes, has reset again.

 

*

 

 _minhyukuuu_ ▼・ᴥ・▼: there’s a package for you

 _joohoney:_ …

 _joohoney:_ what is it

 _minhyukuuu_ ▼・ᴥ・▼: a onesie

_read 10:36 AM_

 

-

 

Jooheon runs, tendons stretching, bones pulling as he sprints up the creaking stairs, chasing, step by step after Changkyun’s bobbing brown wolf head. There is a moment of hope seizing his fluttering heart, when the other boy stills, a slim figure under the glow of moonlight in the direct center of the hallway.

Jooheon reaches for him, fear tinged sweet with the acrid sugar of hope on the tip of his tongue as he cries out, “Changkyun-”

The entire house interrupts him with a groaning screech, and the landing gives way with a sharp _crack_ , dropping Changkyun out of view with a rushed whistle of air and a deafening _crunch_ of fragile bone.

Jooheon stares at the empty spot, picturing Changkyun’s form there, so solid just a second ago, now gone and wiped into a bloody pulp along the splintered ground. He drags his leadened feet across the creaking floorboards and peeks over the uneven edge of the hole into an inky pool of darkness. Changkyun lays there, limbs snapped and wrenched in every which way, reflecting Jooheon’s horrified expression with his serene own, lips pulled apart in a peaceful smile.

 _Find me_ , he laughs, coughing out one last wisp of life into the dried air before Jooheon’s vision is clouding over again with the creeping shadows of the universe’s inexplicable mechanism of fate.

_tick_

_tick_

_tick_

time resets itself again.

 

*

 

 _team mom_ _＾º◡º＾❁_ _:_ there’s a package for you

 _joohoney:_ a onesie

 _team mom_ _＾º◡º＾❁_ _:_ a onesie

_read 10:36 AM_

 

-

 

This time Jooheon doesn’t even make it to the whistling marsh fields before Changkyun is paused, unmoving, offering a stark contrast between the reaching arms of shadowed branches and the unflinching stillness of the black streetlamps that stand bold like a child’s harsh sharpie lines along the stretching sidewalk.

Jooheon wastes no breath on calling out the other’s name, instead biting down on his frantic words and driving himself past the point of sweat and exhaustion, if only to see the younger boy alive and whole again, to feel the solid reality of his body under his own desperate touch once more.

 _Just once more_ , Jooheon pleads to his burning calves, to the blank face of the moon, to whatever cruel god that’s out there - just let Changkyun turn towards him with a smile again, _please_.

It won’t happen, not here, not tonight, not in this twisted universe, not when the wind crushes every single bit of hope in his hummingbird heart with a crackling howl, and the thick shadow of an indomitable street lamp falls over Changkyun’s upturned face in a muffled, violent end.

Jooheon stands still, digging bloody crescents into the soft center of his palms as he watches the black metal rod impale itself through Changkyun’s barely there outline in a shattering spectacle of bone shards and warm, wet spurts of blood, still pulsing red with the heat of life.

 _Find me,_ makes its way out from stained, cracked lips, still dripping with the last remnants of breath as Changkyun’s body begins seizing uncontrollably with hacking coughs. Jooheon bites into the the blood of his own raw bottom lip and clenches his aching eyes shut.

_tick_

_tick_

time resets itself again.

 

*

 

 _manga hyung_ _✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*_ : there’s a package for you

_read 10:36 AM_

 

-

 

Jooheon stands, sneakers sinking into the squelching earth of the marsh fields as he gazes upwards, helpless to do anything but turn his face to the cold shade of the moon. Because there Changkyun sits, under the same solid spotlight of white, dangling his feet from a thread-thin ledge like a five-year-old who is discovering the joys of a playground swing for the first time. A hint of a cloud passes through the clear night sky, blocking the moon’s unflinching stare for a blink of a second before Jooheon realizes the small shadow slipping its way down the mansion walls is Changkyun’s body in horrifying free-fall.  

 _Crunch._ Jooheon forces himself to look, the mud easily allowing him to slip free from its sucking grasp as he drags his numbed body back into aching action.

 _Find me_ , Changkyun mouths, lying twisted among fluttering reeds, something genuinely sad pooling in the twitching cavern of his bloodied gaze.

“Enough,” Jooheon whispers into the gentle hush of the wind, to his own broken mind, to Changkyun’s empty stare. He digs the heels of his palms into the trembling sockets of his eyes and sobs, dry and quiet as black creeps over his vision - again.

_tick_

time resets itself again.

 

*

 

No texts. The watch docilely reads 10:36 against the sallow skin of his wrist, and Jooheon decides to head to the post office anyway.

 _Ding_! The door slides open, easy and welcoming. The sunlight glints like gold off of the rim of his wristwatch.

 _Hello, how may I help you today?_ A package, please.

A onesie, it is indeed.

 

-

 

Time passes. Jooheon closes his eyes - and waits.

 

-

 

Tonight, he walks, no running, no chasing after anything or anyone as he makes his way down the dappled path of another Halloween night. He stops under the slim shadow of a silent streetlamp, eyeing the moths buzzing under its rounded head. When there is no telltale creak or snap of metal he moves on, gliding through splatters of light and shadow until the ache in his body is practically nonexistent.

The marsh emerges next, the rough grit of gravel and cement melding magically into fertile earth and gurgling water, the light tickle of short ferns beginning to grow along his ankles. Jooheon takes a moment to pause and breathe it all in, chest expanding with the essence of something ancient as the image of Changkyun’s body sprawled out among the waving reeds flashes like a warning across his vision for the briefest of seconds. The moon meets his searching gaze without reply, and Jooheon continues moving.

The house, mansion really, stands as foreboding as ever in all its desecrated glory, blowing empty threats at him with its doorless mouth and shattered window-eyes. Jooheon carefully wipes off the marsh stuck to his soles against the porch landing and enters, step after creaking step into the nameless hell-hole where this all started.

It’s a maze - he remembers that, _he knows that_ , so he turns left and keeps walking, eyes open against complete shadow, fingers drawing an invisible line along the crumbling grooves of the hallway walls. He passes an innumerable amount of rooms, locked and closed, loud and creaking, all of them off, all of them wrong in some way - but he pauses because _there_ it is, unbarred by darkness, spilling forth with an abundance of milky moonlight from the unshuttered window panes of the opposing wall - the first room of the first night. Jooheon knows it.

The first step inside sounds like a scream to his ears, and Jooheon wrenches his neck backwards, pupils shaking as they are met with a decaying but still miraculously whole ceiling. An echo of a tick begins to sound in his mind, so he slowly shuffles to the center of the room, the house protesting with every step until he stills, plopping down under a beam in a cross-legged sit. He closes his eyes - and waits.

A creak. A breathy laugh. A deep voice bouncing off and into every molding crevice.

“I never expected this.”

Jooheon’s eyes snap open, and there’s Changkyun leaning against the half-opened door, cartoonish wolf-hood still adorning his head. His neck is upright, his body stands slim and straight, and there’s mirth the color of coffee and hazelnut simmering inside his creased eyes.

“What do you mean,” Jooheon croaks out after an eternity of silence. He hasn’t heard the sound of his own voice for so long, the words taste strange on his tongue.

Changkyun jerks his chin down towards Jooheon’s clenched hands, and the movement is so _alive_ , Jooheon can practically feel the sobs begging to escape from his closed throat. “We’ll see,” he states, crossing his arms with a casual shrug.

The tiny clock face on his wrist reads 11:59. Jooheon steals one more glance at the younger boy’s tilted expression and closes his eyes, ready for the snap of rotten wood above him.

“ _Hyung, you’ve found me.”_

 

Eyes blink open. Warm sunlight. Birds tittering.

Jooheon sits up in bed, a sore spot protesting at the base of his spine. His head pounds as if suffering the results of a bad hangover.

The blaring glare from his phone reads November 1st, 10:36 in the morning. There’s a single alert, buzzing red and urgent from Line. He opens up the app on instinct, the slow drag of shock barely beginning to course through his system.

 

 _loving dongsaeng_ _♥_ : halloween was wild hyung ;) hangover coffee in 10?

 

Jooheon is tripping out of bed, blankets thrown askew, his head and heart both a jumbled mess of emotions. There’s a nervous confession sweetening the tip of his tongue as he sprints out the door, finally stepping foot into a world of glorious sunshine.

On his wrist the leather strap of the watch slips out of its clinking buckles and drops to the ground, landing on the blank watch face with a silent shatter of glass.

Time goes on, resuming itself, unbothered and unnoticed by the two laughing bashfully inside a coffee shop, flushed over a single cup of hot cocoa, lips burnt pink with steam and a fresh kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! How was it? Please please leave a comment - any little thing, comments, criticism, any and all are welcome!!  
> Hit me up on tumblr!! : [x](https://happycakestories.tumblr.com/)  
> 


End file.
